A dull session of the parliament on Friday urged the government to link restoration of NATO supplies to Afghanistan to end to US drone attacks inside country as the main opposition party PML-N largely remained absent from the House.
Starting the debate, PML-Q Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed called for making the resumption of NATO supplies conditional. “Unless the drone strikes were not stopped, NATO supplies should not be restored,” he emphasised as he believed these attacks against the national sovereignty.
Mushahid proposed that the country should allow only those NATO containers which carry foodstuff or similar things and disallow the transit of weapons in the NATO containers from the country to Afghanistan. “The permission to allow weaponry in the NATO supplies means that we want to continue the conflict in Afghanistan,” he noted. He commended the recommendations of Parliamentary Committee on National Security saying it had come up with the best to redefine ties with the US. “This is for the first time that the US has taken seriously the Pakistani parliament after 9/11 incident on its soil as US President Barack Obama also suggested that they are waiting the decision of the Pakistani parliament on NATO supply,” he said.
Senator Mushahid, however, deplored the ‘lack of seriousness and homework’ for the session to debate the recommendations of the national security committee. He even regretted the role of opposition in the joint session and felt that opposition appeared scared to debate these recommendations. “When their members signed the report in the committee, why they are running away from the parliament to discuss this issue,” Mushahid said. PPP senator Saeed Ghani said if the people outside parliament are calling for stopping the NATO supplies by force, what the utility of this parliament is. “When parliament embarks upon formulating the foreign policy, these elements get up in arms,” Ghani observed and added these very people had no objection when the dictators took the decisions on their whims.
PPP MNA Akhunzada Chattan said new foreign policy should be judged in the backdrop of drone attacks adding it would be successful if these drone attack are stopped.
He also questioned the silence of those parties which were in power in KP and Balochistan during Musharraf era when NATO supplies began and added now they were raising hue and cry over it. There were no instances of protests, boycotts or walkouts during the sitting. The House deferred the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill for the fifth time. Four bills on the Orders of the Day were not taken up. It included the pro-women Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill 2009 which was deferred for the fifth time. However, the House passed the Modaraba Companies and Modaraba (Floatation and Control) (Amendment) Bill 2009 and the Delimitation of Constituencies (Amendment) Bill 2011. The house was adjourned to meet again on April 05.